XP SP3 won't boot after clone
Hello;
This is driving me crazy and I'm out of things to try.
I have a Dell optiplex 360 with XP SP3. Works fine, no problems.
I want to upgrade the HHD to a segate 320gb from the current 160GB drive.
Used Acronis Disk Director Home's 'clone basic disc' function to copy the drive to the new drive. Partitions copied no problem. The original drive has a 'local volume' which is 48mb and an OS partitions with windows. Both partitions copied to the new drive. All show healthy. The OS partition on both the old and new drives are system,boot. None of the drives are 'active'.
When I put the new drive in the computer all i get is no boot device available.
If i set the OS partition to 'active' then I get missing NTLDR message. I verified that NTLDR is on the OS partition, even replaced it with a new copy use in case. No luck.
Also tried a different (new) HDD with the same result. Tired different clone software. Same result.
If I put the original drive back in the comptuer it boots fine.
What am I missing?
Thanks in advance for any assistance that you can provide.
-Steve

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Hello, thanks for responding.
boot.ini on original drive
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
boot.ini on cloned drive
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
They look to be the same. Checked again, the original drive still boots fine.
-Steve
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Steve:
Yes, they look the same and if both disks have the same partition layout then that rules out the most common reason for the error message. The next most common reason is a corrupted partition boot record on the second (XP) partition. Boot the PC from a Windows XP installation CD and go to the recovery console. You should have only the cloned hard disk attached. Be sure that the source disk is disconnected. The fixboot command will write a new partition boot record to the XP partition. pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ht/newbootsector.htm
The OS partition on the cloned disk needs to be set as Active.
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Mark;
fixboot worked. I appreciate your help.
-Steve
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Good deal - glad to hear it.
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